@story  S.T. COOK
@images  FOS Project

Forget all the pop culture myths about rock and roll. There’s a music scene at large in Northwest Arkansas living by its own rules. Call it a gray haired underground: dozens of veteran musicians, most in non-musical professions, operating below even local media radar, playing in bands not to get a record deal and tour the country, but just because they enjoy making music. They’re living proof you’re never too old to rock and roll.

Joe Giles personifies the attitude of this scene. He started playing drums and singing in bands when he was in Farmington High School, sort of grew up and eventually became the principal of Prairie Grove elementary school. He says “music never goes away. I always missed it.” So in the late eighties he put a band together called the Hardtops. After they broke up he formed Joe Giles and the Homewreckers, and eleven years later they’re still going strong. Giles admits he’s a good, energetic front man, but calls himself a “negligible talent.”  “I own a truck and a PA system, I’m willing to do the booking and I have the sense to hire good musicians,” he explains.

Giles absolutely loves to hear his band play. They are basically a cover band, but, like their musical cohorts, they draw on hits from at least four decades, not just the last four months. They play what their audience wants to hear.

Giles says he makes music “half for fun, and half for money. If it wasn’t fun, I’d quit. And if they didn’t pay me, I’d quit.” He’s retired from the school system but recently landed a new day job: executive director of Fayetteville’s Bikes, Blues and Barbeque. He says he’ll keep playing, but says if his band thinks this means they’ll get top billing on the BB&BBQ stage “Boy, are they gonna be pissed.”

If Giles has the attitude, Rodney Williams represents another facet of the scene: laid back and seasoned, like the musicians he plays with in the Travelling Wheelbearings. Williams was an early member of this casual “super-group”, attracted by a gig that wouldn’t interfere with his teaching and research at the University of Arkansas.

Williams is a self-taught guitarist from Roach, Missouri. He spent years playing in country and southern rock bands, and he says one of them, Southern Fried, almost made it to the big time. When that went south he settled in Fayetteville with a steady job at the Club West – but he said he already had decided to “take another course.” For somewhat longer than four years he attended the university during the day and played guitar five or six nights a week in the band Stage One.  After he got his degree in civil engineering he went to graduate school and stopped playing regularly. He eventually got his Ph.D. and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the College of Engineering. Still, when the late Stevie Ward got the idea for the Wheelbearings, and invited Williams to join, he didn’t think twice: “All those guys are great, and, hell, I’d pay to play with Earl.”

Earl is Earl Cate, of the Cate Brothers Band, an early member of the Wheelbearings. Many musicians have been in and out of this band, but Earl Cate is still a regular. Why? “Because it’s fun. They’re good.”

The Wheelbearings generally feature a trio of lead guitars, all respected veterans: Earl Cate, Rodney Williams, and Bob Myers.

Myers is from Carthage, Missouri, but he moved to Fayetteville in 1976 and has been a fixture on the local scene – playing and arranging for Zorro and the Blue Footballs for three years, the Hot House Tomato Boys later on, and Stage One, with Williams, in between.  He figures he’s taught around 20,000 guitar lessons over the years, and he does some computer repair, but he considers himself a professional musician. The past two years he’s been lead guitar in the Jason Strode Band, which he describes as modern, high energy country.

The Wheelbearings are anything but a typical band, even among their contemporaries. For example, they don’t rehearse. They play songs they all know and like, and work out the details while performing. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but that’s where the experience kicks in.  When they launch their three guitar attack on “Ghost Riders in the Sky” or “Like a Rolling Stone”, it’s hard to think of them as a cover band.

The FOS Project Band does rehearse. For one thing, they haven’t been together that long.

Loren Bailey, from Springdale, played in the Hardtops, with Joe Giles. He started a fuel management business in 1992, but still sang and played guitar for fun, with friends like Sid Groves. Then Sid came down with cancer. Loren watched his friend battle the disease, and saw the comfort and support he got from Hope, Inc. Sid’s dying wish was for Loren to get a bunch of their friends together, form a band and hold a fundraiser for the organization. Loren started Friends of Sid, and after a couple of successful fundraising events, the band started to take on a life of its own, evolving into the FOS Project, which I believe is the best new band in Northwest Arkansas.

The FOS Project breaks all kinds of rules: their name isn’t clever or funny or cool, it actually means something; they’re an eight piece band – with horns; they play soul music -- not blues, soul; and most of them are in their fifties. None of which matters because of the musical skills and wildly varied experience Sid and Loren’s friends bring to the group.

There’s Chuck Tripp, a twenty-two year veteran with the Arkansas Highway Police. He went to Springdale High with Loren and played trumpet in Band with Sid. He also gigged as the “Chuck Lunch Horns” with Mike Mohney, before Moheny became a Blue Football.

Steve Baskin knew Loren and Chuck at Springdale High. He’s played bass in a variety of bands. He’s also in his twenty-third year as band director at Huntsville High School.

Randy Reese played drums in Bentonville High School and skipped college “to become a rock and roll star.”  He put down his sticks for eighteen years, but gradually came back to music. Now he drives a dump truck by day, and is the FOS Project’s foundation at night.

Dr. John Parks is a recently retired orthopedic surgeon who heard about a band that needed a keyboard player. He says it took a little while to get the rust off his fingers, but he’s enjoying the chance to play again.

Jake Edington is the youngest member of the band, under thirty, and may be the best musician. He started on sax when he was six, studied music at the University of Arkansas, and has played every kind of music in every kind of band in the area. His solos get the spotlight in any song the band performs, but he describes the FOS experience as “eight musicians and no egos.”

Loren sang lead and played rhythm guitar when the band started out, but when their lead guitarist left he assumed that role, and says he’s still learning. He can concentrate on guitar now because he has two powerful vocalists to share the singing.

Diana Billingslea grew up in Rogers, moved to North Hollywood after graduation and did a fair amount of studio work. When it was time for her kids to start school she came home. If you don’t think Randy Newman writes soul music you should hear her sing “You Can Keep Your Hat On.”

Amanda Cole-Collins is the newest member of the group. She’s from Starkville, Mississippi, and her professional career includes four and a half years touring as a replacement member of En Vogue. She left that to raise a family, and when her husband was hired at the Walmart corporate office, they moved to Rogers with their four daughters. Listen to her sing “Unchain My Heart”, or bring soul fire to the Eagles’ “Take It to the Limit” and you'll thank Walmart for bringing her to Arkansas.

The audience for these bands, and many more like them, is enthusiastic and growing. The fans and the bands have a lot in common.  There’s the music, or course, and some of the experiences. They all agree that bands don’t need to play until two a.m. – Happy Hour is just fine. The volume doesn’t have to make your ears bleed: if it seems too soft, maybe you’re too young. Singing and musicianship are valued. But mostly they believe that rock and roll, the people who play it and the people who love it, are simply ageless.